1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus and an image processing method, and more particularly to an image processing apparatus and an image processing method used for diagnosis of living tissues and the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, for the purpose of supporting to identify a lesion site (abnormal site) in an image obtained by picking up an image of a living tissue in a body cavity using an endoscope and the like, studies have been developed on an image processing for detecting a running pattern of a blood vessel under a living mucosa and (or) a predetermined structure of an epithelial tissue from the obtained image.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 10-143648 discloses the image processing in which a smoothed image obtained by smoothing a digital image is used to form a skeleton of a strip-shaped blood vessel included in the digital image.